


blessed with beauty and rage

by junko (orphan_account)



Series: you make me happy [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - No Powers, F/F, Female Bucky Barnes, Female Steve Rogers, Flowers, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-07-18
Packaged: 2018-02-09 08:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1975851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/junko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natalia's phone goes off at five fucking am, <i>I got a pocket got a pocket full of sunshine</i>, and Jamie throws her lamp against the wall with a strangled yell.</p><p>In the silence that follows, she yells at the wall, “I'm moving in with Stella.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	blessed with beauty and rage

**Author's Note:**

> i continued it I AM SCUM  
> jamie's pov this time  
> title from ldr's ultraviolence

The thing is, when she gets home, things are different. Distorted. Like in a cartoon, how they draw mirrors by putting a wavy stripe through something? That's the vibe she feels. Things are heavy, the air is different – humid, nothing like the dry desert – and she finds herself choking on it, crazy enough as that is.

Jamie stares at her reflection through the window, and she's in the fancy apartment she shares with Natalia, and it's dark out – as dark as it can ever be in this city. If she focuses, she can see her reflection; if she zones out, she sees the lights outside. Surely there's a metaphor in there somewhere. To think, all those years of Russian Lit, gone to waste.

She can feel her head and her heart and the ceiling crashing around her pierced ears, her short hair, her red lips, and she's drowning in it, this image she's created for herself, and she doesn't hear the knock at the door.

Natalia is at rehearsal still, so when someone opens the door, Jamie near jumps out of her skin, and she's about to spin around, to throw something, to kill, when she sees the clear image of blond hair in the window reflection. 

(She can always focus when she's in danger, or when she thinks she is, anyway.)

Why are you here, she wants to say. How do you always know when to show up, she wants to say. Instead, she says “You don't live here.”

Stella doesn't smile, just puts her coat down and approaches slowly, hands palms up, and Jamie remembers a distant conversation, Dad in the army, of course she knows what she's doing.

Finally, she's right behind her, and Jamie's shoulders hitch. Stella isn't tall enough to put her chin on Jamie's shoulders, so instead she settles a bit to the side, puts a hand on her upper arm. She doesn't talk.

“The air is too wet,” Jamie says finally, bluntly. “It's going to rain. I can feel it in my arm. I don't like it.”

Stella nods, squeezes her biceps. The lights outside are reflecting weirdly, between the window and her glasses. Her hair is shorter now, she must have gotten a haircut since Jamie last saw her.

Stella still isn't talking, and Jamie is getting agitated, so she tries to fill it in. “I don't recognize it. Brooklyn. The city. _The City_ , it's different, I don't know it anymore. I was only gone four years.” 

Stella swallows before talking, to clear her throat, and it's quiet but still audible. “You've grown. So has Brooklyn. City's always movin', Buck. 'S why it's the city. You want still, static, you can go back to Indiana. Brooklyn doesn't wait for anyone.” She cracks a smile now, and her lip is split, so it's followed by a wince. “Hell, last time I caught a cold, by the time I left my apartment the entire building across the street had been bought out.”

“Why are you saying that,” Jamie asks, confused, half-turning before she catches herself.

Stella shrugs. “Well, cities are made up of people, aren't they? People you see everyday, your neighbors and roommates and the waitress at your coffee shop. Some towns, you know the same people your whole life. Not the case, here.”

Jamie spins around, grabs Stella by the shoulders. She doesn't talk, just. Squeezes. 

Stella tilts her head back, smiles wryly. “You should call your sisters,” she says, brings a tattooed hand up to rest on Jamie's. “It'll do you good. Stop listening to sad military music. Sit down, I'll make you food.” 

And then she's moving, ducking under Jamie's arms to go bustle about in the kitchen. Jamie follows obediently, sitting down at the table even as she grumbles, “What does that even mean, military music.”

While Stella hums, Jamie looks at her reflection, in a mirror this time. It's like – the bubble popped, maybe. Like turning off the tv and going outside after a weekend spent watching cartoons. She breathes. Looks at herself.

She has short hair and black-ringed eyes and red lips. She has fashionably-messy hair and red eyes and smiling lips. She does not look like a soldier. She does not look soulless. She uses one fingernail to wipe at her eye-rim, where the black has run, and Stella doesn't even look up from where she's cutting vegetables as she passes a tissue.

“How are you doing that?” Jamie asks, impressed, and Stella is deadpan as she shoots back lightning-quick, “It's my superpower. When you're deaf, you automatically become psychic as well.” 

Jamie laughs.

/ / / / / 

Natalia's phone goes off at five fucking am, _I got a pocket got a pocket full of sunshine_ , and Jamie throws her lamp against the wall with a strangled yell.

In the silence that follows, she yells at the wall, “I'm moving in with Stella.”

Natalia's voice comes through muffled as she replies, “Good. Does that mean I get to live with Sharon?”

So, apparently roommate swapping is a thing. Is that legal?

Jamie shrugs, goes back to sleep. 

/ / / / / 

The flower shop is nice. Its soothing. She likes getting dirt and earth under her fingernails, and she likes the way the air smells and she likes wrapping pots with ribbon. She likes the smooth feel of the petals under her hands.

She's carefully twisting forget-me-not stems around a wire, joining big red roses already on the headband. Making flower crowns is good for her, according to Sam; but she doesn't need him to tell her that. Besides, they look pretty.

She's bobbing her head in time to the music when the bell over the door chimes, and she looks up to see Stella coming in, dwarfed in her parka. 

“Welcome,” she says, since her manager is lurking, before she says, “It really isn't that cold out. What's up?” She's smiling like an idiot, probably.

Stella is grinning, so Jamie is definitely smiling like an idiot. “Sharon's field partner was shot during a mission, so Sharon asked me to pick something up for her. She likes red, apparently.”

“Are we supposed to know that?” Jamie asks mildly, already walking around the counter to go examine the choices. “Bouquet, or pot?”

“Uh, something for a hospital room, so either really? Nothing too big. And she called it an accident, but come on. It's her aunt Peggy, by the way.”

“Cool that they're working together.” Jamie narrows her eyes before grabbing a few bouquets from their buckets and returning to her workstation, plucking flowers from them and making a new one. It has daisies, red peonies, a few leftover forget-me-nots from earlier. “Good?”

“Gorgeous,” Stella affirms, “But don't peonies mean, like, weddings?”

“They can,” Jamie shrugs, “But in Greek mythology they're named after a student of the god of medicine, and in ancient China people used it to cure asthma. And cramps. Hey, it's perfect for you!”

Stella punches her over the counter, and it barely registers to Jamie, but she acts wounded all the same as she wraps the arrangement in plastic and ties it with a red ribbon. Stella pulls out her wallet to pay, and Jamie watches her, hesitates.

Finally making up her mind, she grabs the flower crown she was making earlier, twists the last wire down, and places it on Stella's hair. 

“On the house,” she says with a crooked grin, and Stella leans over to give her a kiss on the cheek, delighted. 

“Thank you,” and she's blushing apple-red all over her pretty face, and Jamie kind of wants to drag her into the back room. “Do you want me to come pick you up after work?”

Jamie considers this. On one hand, she's not five. On the other hand, it could be nice. “Sure.”

Stella smiles, collects the flower arrangement, and it's almost taller than she is when she's holding it in her arms. “See you later,” she says, and has to push the door open with her back to get out.

Jamie's manager raises an eyebrow at her with a grin. “Do you really know someone in the CIA?”

“Confidential information,” she replies blandly.

/ / / / / 

They're in their apartment – their apartment. Their apartment. Technically, Stella's apartment, that until recently she shared with Sharon, but now shares with Jamie. They're sitting on the couch, leaning against a knitted afghan in forest greens. Stella always knits and draws and dresses in green by default, because otherwise she has to ask someone what color she's using, and it bothers her.

They're watching another documentary, because neither will admit it but they both love them, and this time it's about Pepper Potts and Stark Industries. Jamie never knew that Potts was a model before becoming a CEO, but she's not surprised that Stella knew.

She's stretched out with her feet in Stella's lap, and she would feel bad for taking up space, but, well, Stella doesn't really need much. Besides, Stella is rubbing her thumb against Jamie's ankle, and it's comforting, even if it's on that damned butterfly tattoo.

“I like this tattoo,” she mumbles, because they've both had long days. 

“That tattoo doesn't exist,” Jamie retorts instinctively. This game is old, but she still plays it. “What you're seeing is an optical illusion of your tired mind.”

Stella doesn't have an answer, and Jamie is surprised for all of two seconds before her girlfriend leans over and presses a kiss to the little design. If it wasn't Stella, that probably would have been really weird, but instead Jamie feels affectionate and happy. She switches sides in a decidedly ungraceful maneuver so that her front is facing Stella instead, and she wraps her arms around her waist. Stella's hand finds her hair.

“You're a cat, Bucky,” she accuses, but she doesn't not encourage it. 

“Shh, baby, can't hear the tv,” Jamie croons, and then promptly falls asleep. 

/ / / / / 

Stella comes to her one day, blushing red and smiling shyly, and she pulls out a creamy piece of paper, the expensive kind, before passing it across the table to her. It's a watercolor, in delicate reds and pinks and oranges, of flowers. There's a drawing of her arm done in rough pencil, where the mechanical design stops, and the new tattoo seems to flow from it, organic.

Jamie actually has to blink away tears, which, what the fuck. This never used to happen to her before she met this stupid punk. Jamie Barnes was not a crying type of girl. And now she's crying over a tattoo design for her arm. _It's not even in her skin yet._

She carefully puts the paper down, so as not to ruin it, before gathering Stella in her arms. “It's perfect,” she breathes, and she bends over to pepper kisses over the smaller girl's face. “You're perfect,” she amends, and Stella proves her right by grabbing her face and dragging her down for a proper kiss.

Jamie pulls back, says into her hair, “Shit, you're really short. This is impossible. Can you stand on a stool or something?” 

Stella glares at her and pushes her over the arm of the couch, which. Works too. 

Jamie goes down laughing.

**Author's Note:**

> it started out sad and im sorry
> 
> please tell me what you think! you can find me at ladydent on tumblr, or else on my female cap roleplay account at captstella.


End file.
